How does Shakespeare convey a feeling of evil in the play ‘Macbeth’?
Hannah Jones 11G
English Coursework: Shakespeare
31st October 2000
How does Shakespeare convey a feeling of evil in the play 'Macbeth'?
The play 'Macbeth', written by William Shakespeare in 1606, is notable for its bleak portrayal of the uneasy, dark side of human nature that is often ignited by greed and the desire for success. It is questionable whether the complexity of any human quality can be understood completely, so throughout history people have been apt to defy complexity by blaming all they found iniquitous on one stereotypical image - evil - which must be forcibly exterminated. At the time the play was written and first performed, during the reign (in Scotland and England) of King James I, the personification of evil was the witch.
'Macbeth' presents some stereotypical images of evil - after all, it was written for a king who was said to be obsessed with fear of witches (James I wrote a book on witchcraft in 1597). The audience are disturbed by the recurring and grotesque images of destruction, gore and sickness of the evil in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, conveyed in illustrative and rhythmical language, but ultimately the play raises some questions regarding who or what is to blame for the evil in society. One argument is that Lucifer has servants on earth who manipulate our essentially good and virtuous natures; the other is that there is an unsettling side to us that we do not want to believe exists.
The audience are immediately intoxicated with evil, being thrown into a first scene that we know is associated with wickedness. Witches are traditionally and recognisably dressed as ugly, old hags - Shakespeare intended them to be 'so withered and so wild in their attire/That look not like th'inhabitants o' the earth' (Iiii40-41) - but this may have some flaws. If the witches were made stereotypical, they would too easily be the scapegoat for all the evil and wrongdoing in the play, and the ambiguity of it would be reduced. Therefore it would be more adroit to have the witches young and beautiful, which would enhance their elevated knowledge of the events in the play by positioning them on a higher level of beauty. The witches could also be deathly pale and dressed in flowing, black robes, emphasising the sickness of death and evil and the contrast between 'fair' light (paleness) and 'foul' dark (black). They would also look haunting and disturbing.
The witches in the opening scene (lines 10-11) declare 'Fair is foul and foul is fair/Hover through the fog and filthy air'. The repetition of the 'f' sound is reminiscent of a person spitting bleakly as if betrayed - Macbeth's betrayal of those that trust him is one of the key elements of the play - and the idea of good and bad being intermingled, confused, is repeated in the next scene when Macbeth is hailed as 'Valour's minion' for gruesomely executing people (Norwegian enemies). Also, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's existences turn into madness, somewhat like a chaotic ...
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The witches in the opening scene (lines 10-11) declare 'Fair is foul and foul is fair/Hover through the fog and filthy air'. The repetition of the 'f' sound is reminiscent of a person spitting bleakly as if betrayed - Macbeth's betrayal of those that trust him is one of the key elements of the play - and the idea of good and bad being intermingled, confused, is repeated in the next scene when Macbeth is hailed as 'Valour's minion' for gruesomely executing people (Norwegian enemies). Also, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's existences turn into madness, somewhat like a chaotic 'fog' while the 'filthy air' that is 'hovering' is the contamination of evil.
Act One Scene Two, 'at a camp near Forres' should be damp and misty, to convey the bleak exhaustion caused by the aftermath of bloodshed. An injured captain portrays Macbeth as 'Disdaining Fortune, with his brandished steel/Which smoked with bloody execution/Like Valour's minion, carved out his passage/Till he faced the slave/Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him/Till he unseamed him from the nave to the chaps/And fixed his head upon our battlements'. The image of Macbeth's sword 'smoking' is that of all his victims' blood rising to the air as if slaughter to him was an aloof routine; Macbeth 'unseams' Macdonwald (King of Norway), implying that he is an object whose stitches can be undone without guilt.
This grotesque description is praising Macbeth, but the audience have an uneasy sense that his real capacity for cold-blooded violence is tentatively troubling. We feel submerged in blood and gore because the description is so graphic, and this submersion is to continue throughout 'Macbeth' with the bloody murders of Banquo and Lady Macduff and her children.
Macbeth sends Lady Macbeth a letter saying that three 'weird sisters' have informed him that he is to be king. She fears his nature is 'too full o' the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way' (Iiv17), which is in stark contrast to his seemingly endless ability for carnage. This is illustrative of Macbeth's inner struggle between goodness (sweet, white milk is symbolic of the ultimate purity) and evil ('bloody execution'). Lady Macbeth then calls on evil spirits to eradicate her conscience and give her the strength to persuade Macbeth to kill Duncan so that he can become king. During this soliloquy lighting should be dim with a spotlight on her to symbolise her personal journey into being completely polluted with evil. She should shriek loudly and reach out her hands above her - she is demanding, and begging, for an offering from spirits.
Her speech conveys a sense of total saturation. The image in line 48: 'And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers', combines with the phlegm-like sound 'k' in 'thick', 'croaks', 'shake' and 'milk' conveys a vision of froth at the top of a full, bubbling, unpleasantly green and bitter liquid - gall, a sour poison that causes sickness, and symbolises the sickness of evil in Lady Macbeth that she wants to replace her feminine (gentle and pleasant) qualities with. Once again the harshly contrasting image of milk - purity and goodness - is used.
The most prominent evil creations in 'Macbeth' are used in Act I Scene v. Lady Macbeth talks of a 'raven' - a watchful, chilling bird used extensively as a embodiment of evil and madness in, for example, Edgar Allen Poe's 1845 poem 'The Raven' - and tells her husband to 'look like the innocent flower/ But be the serpent under 't'. Macbeth's behaviour in murdering the king parallels the serpent's role in the Bible when it tempted Adam into eating the forbidden fruit. Thus, him doing so is starkly defying the wishes of God (or supreme goodness). That which manifestly defies goodness is pure and deep evil.
Another scene (IVi) is even more profoundly evil than the first scene. Once again an act opens with the three witches, adding to the sense that they are on a higher altitude of insight and can distantly observe what they know will happen. The audience have been thoroughly sickened by the murders of Duncan and Banquo and the extent of evil that has penetrated Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, so to see the witches again adds strongly to the despondency and vicious malevolence in 'Macbeth'.
They speak in quite a routine rhythm: '[all] Double, double, toil and trouble:/ Fire, burn; and cauldron bubble. [witch 2] Fillet of a fenny snake/In the cauldron boil and bake;/Eye of newt, and toe of frog,/Wool of bat and tongue of dog'. The things they throw in the cauldron to make their spell are wholly vile ('poisoned entrails', 'sweltered venom', 'finger of birth-strangled babe'), which contrasts acutely with the mundane beat. This conveys the impression that evil deeds are integrated into the rhythm of daily existence, and must be done distantly, as if in a blurred nightmare. This is exactly how Macbeth's life has become. Also, the rhythm is reminiscent of 'Fair is foul...' (Ii10-11) which conveys to the audience how the 'foul'-ness and 'filthy air' has infected, and will continue to infect, the country of Scotland.
Macbeth enters, and demands they 'answer me/To what I ask you'. Here evil is conveyed purely with sight - the apparitions which give the predictions are 'an armed head', 'a bloody child' and 'a child crowned, with a tree in his hand' - but also with Macbeth being reliant on the supernatural, the ambiguous and unstable. He has completely lost control of his own life and happiness, and is dependent on evil. This reinforces the idea that evil is a contamination and an addiction.
Lady Macbeth is suffering as much as her husband from what they have done; in Act Five Scene One she is shown to be completely and wretchedly mad. The fact that others (her companion the Gentlewoman and a doctor - and the audience) can only quietly observe her sleepwalking shows that she has entered into another realm which is inescapable; that of evil. People who are still on the 'good' side watch, and pity her helplessness. She has succumbed to what she asked for in her 'unsex me here' plea (Iv), but has failed to destroy her conscience, which has made her tormented to be in the clutches of evil.
She uses a 'rational' voice to talk to herself in her sleep: 'Come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What's done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed'. Lady Macbeth is trying to soothe herself by drawing away from herself, adopting a 'fair' character to overcome the 'foul' reality, but she only does this in her sleep; she is irreversibly intoxicated with evil and consciously knows she will never recover from it.
Sleep is spoken of throughout 'Macbeth'. After Macbeth murders Duncan he expresses it as 'Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,/The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,/Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,/Chief nourisher in life's feast'. This description is one of all that is calming, comforting and ultimately good, but also shows desperation, as Macbeth laments his loss of the pleasure of sleep. Evil has seeped into every crack of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's lives, rendering it impossible for them to enjoy anything that is inspired by the divine, as sleep is described.
The characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have a huge impact on the audience. We witness their personal and separate demises, into evil, madness and then into defeat and death. They wrangle with 'foul' darkness and 'fair' light, and we see these conveyed in contrasting images such as milk and gore. Ultimately, they are both human beings with one fatal flaw - ambition. So tempted are they by the lure of being king and queen that they forsake all morality in favour of evil. They are comparable to Adam and Eve, who were tempted to do a thing they knew went against all morality, and gave in.
Shakespeare wrote the play for a time of widespread hysteria, due to ignorance, about witchcraft. For this reason he incorporated in 'Macbeth' three 'weird sisters' who we (even more so for a 17th century audience) automatically presume are evil. However, what they do regarding Macbeth is neutral; they merely predict the future. They are the enticement, but whether to act on the enticement is down to a person's - Macbeth's and Lady Macbeth's - own free will. Perhaps the most chilling and evil aspect of 'Macbeth' is not the graphic violence, nor the evil imagery, but the simple fact that each and every person has vices, can give in to temptation, and pure temptation can breed foul and revolting evil that consumes and overwhelms the person.
